The Power Outage of 2010...

...ended two weeks ago tommorow for us.  And it's taken me this long to recooperate enough mentally to be able to blog about it. ;)  (Actually, I started this post a week ago, but am just now getting back to finish it.) Basically in a 92 hour span (almost 4 full days) we had electricity for only about 20 hours, and the last 56 straight we were completely without.  This was all thanks to lots of frost for several days, topped off by an afternoon of freezing rain.  Not a good mix.

Power lines aren't supposed to look like this.  We heard reports of some 1600 poles down. Completely down; poles, not just lines, broken. Umm...that's going to take awhile to fix.  And that essentially means we were the lucky ones.  By virtue of living in town we were supplied with power during the overnight hours during the first two nights of the outage.  Then ours was completely restored two days after that.  Most people in our area were completely without for at least six days.  Some were without for 14 days. yikes.

But none the less, four days of no power with two small children in the house isn't exactly a picnic.  Oh, the first few hours it was.  The flashlights were great toys and there was a sense of adventure and romance for us all.  The novelty quickly wore off.  So, what did we do?  Well, here is a sequence of events.

Initial power outage, Friday, Jan. 22, 7 pm - Bathe children by candlelight and put them to bed.  Engage husband in game of Scrabble, by candlelight. Not as romantic as it otherwise could have been as that game more than any other tends to bring out the competitiveness in both he and I.  He won, by the way.  See that word 'fact' up at the top?  That was the clencher, somehow worth a whopping 48 points, or something like that.  And I as much as gave it to him by insisting that 'cloy' is a word.  Which it is.  But had I gone with 'coy', the placement of the following word 'fact' wouldn't have garnered him nearly as many points.

Power kicks back on, Friday, Jan. 22, 10:30 pm - We rejoice that the furnace will be able to run over night, and mistakenly think we're out of the woods.  So the next morning I start some chicken in the crockpot and initiate a cookie-baking session with Lilyanna.  Only to have...

Another power outage, Saturday, Jan. 23, 10:30 am - Hmm, obviously the chicken's not going to cook and I don't feel like mixing the cookie dough by hand, so we abandon both of those projects "while waiting for the power to come back on".  Lunch consisted of soup and grilled cheese sandwiches cooked over William's little backpacking camp stove.  Surprisingly tasty and the novelty factor is still keeping things fun. During the afternoon someone from our church brought us a propane-powered space heater and a portable burner that runs on butane.  All of the sudden we were living in power outage luxury!  Throughout the afternoon about four dozen phone calls ring through our house.  Friends checking on us.  Us checking on friends.  Back and forth debate about should we or should we not have church.  Ultimately it was decided not to have it. So more necessary calls were made. 

With no furnace running, we tried to trap as much heat as possible and therefore hung a down comforter between our kitchen and garage/entryway, a notoriously chilly little section of the house.  The temperature difference between the two areas was quickly noticable and we were thankful for this little "survival trick". :)

Well, my crock-potted chicken had thawed, so I needed to do something with it.  I sent William with it in a foil pan out to the barbeque grill, and started the rest of the chicken soup elements over the butane burner.  A little while later we were sitting down to a delicious homemade chicken noodle soup dinner, and I was frankly feeling quite smug about my abilities even when deprived of light and electricity.

We settled the children into bed and actually got to watch a movie via the stored-up battery power on the laptop.  My ever-thinking husband made sure we plugged in all of our battery powered devices before we went to be on Friday night.

To our surprise...
Power kicks back on, Sunday Jan. 24, midnight - Again, we had the good fortune of having the furnace run overnight.  But, at 6 a.m. I wake up to the all-telling clicks and whirrs or the power cutting in and out. And sadly,

Electricity dies it's final death, Sunday Jan. 24, 8 am - And the wind had come up, so we decide it's a good thing we cancelled church, not only would it be cold and dark in the buidling, but the blowing snow would have made getting there tricky too.

We just sort of hunked in for the day, centering our activities in the small portion of the house that really received the benefit of the space heater.  I suppose now would be a good time to mention that most people out on farms were keeping at least their furnaces running with generators.  From the reports we heard, they seem to be sort of a mixed blessing.  Yes, you can in one sense operate slightly more normally, but in another you have to constantly babysit the thing.  Of course, we were slightly paranoid about the possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning.  The men folk seemed to think we'd be fine, the women fanned the paranoia. :) 

We also discovered that just surviving can take a surprising amount of time and work.  On one hand there is suddenly much less that needs to be done when the power is out, but on the other hand, the things that still must be done take longer.  We reorganized our candle, flashlight and battery supply and restructured our cooking arrangement.  Things were starting to look like a war zone.   And we had finished supper by 5:30, I think, because we didn't want to be fixing dinner again in the dark.

So then the evening, the space of time between supper and the kids' bedtime was VERY long.  We brought their slide up from downstairs because we all just really needed something to do.  The kids actually handled the whole thing very well.  We had a hard time keeping warm clothes on Lily, she prefers to run around in short sleeves and summer dresses and I guess a cool house didn't damper that desire.  And Liam's biggest complaint was when I tried to bundle him too much at bedtime.  Extra pajamas and piles of blankets were not for him.  So we all endured a chilly night and were none worse off in the morning.  Except that the daddy and I were not really thrilled about the idea of getting out of bed when it was only 54 degrees in the house.  Even then we couldn't get the kids to cuddle with us under the blankets.  I need some child-like cirrculation, I tell ya.

Power still out, Monday Jan. 25, 9 am - It was pancakes and eggs for breakfast.  We may have been chilly, but we did our best to eat well.  By now, I will say, the whole thing was starting to get a little old.  And to make matters worse, the weather was horrendous.  Our snow pile out back grew by feet throughout the day due to drifting, and it was obvious that there really would be no hope of getting the power back on that day.  We unloaded the refrigerator and freezer contents into coolers and boxes to be put in the garage and snowbanks, depending on the desired cold-factor of the items.  By sunset on Monday, as we were again facing the prospect of pulling out all the candles, I was rather depressed.  And talking to several others later, I wasn't the only one for whom that was a low point.  Thank goodness the phones worked.  I think we were all just desperate for connection of some kind. 

We did manage to enjoy one more candle-lit evening.  I will say, the whole thing made for some good family bonding time.  We just did everything together for three, four days.  It was sort of like a stay-cation.  And we realized that it would probably work to take the kids camping, as camping wouldn't be a whole lot different from what we were experiencing.  As we huddled under our covers that night, I prayed hard that tomorrow would be the day!

Power still out, Tuesday,  Jan. 26, 8:30 am - One more pancake breakfast (our milk had expired and who wants a cold breakfast anyway when the house is 55 degrees?), the realization of another morning without a shower, and the heating of water out on the camp stove to do dishes and I had had enough!  The hot water had been used up on Sunday, thus that was also the day of my last shower.  But I couldn't take it any more!  We had to get out.  Even if it was just out for a drive, I had to get out or risk losing my sanity.  We decided to drive up to Bowdle.  Rumor was, they had power.  We planned to eat and the local convenience store (high-class, I know) and then drop in on some people from our church in the Tolstoy area.  We were pleased to discover this outing had an effect similar to that of going to the bathroom in a restaurant while you're waiting for your food to come.  Ususally it's on the table when you return.

Return to Hoven, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 4 pm - We pull onto our street and I see the beautiful sight of steam, smoke, something coming from the furnace vent on our roof.  The power was on!  Ahh....we could breath a sigh of relief.  We could run the dishwasher.  We could take a shower.  We could have friends who were still without power over for supper.  Which we did.  We could enjoy the chaos of supper with three little children in full light.  We could return to life as normal.  With a little more appreciation of the little, or not so little, things.